About Us

The CEEIT research group has been in existence since March 2020. The group emerged from the initiative of a group of PhD students interested in pushing at some of the limits of ethnographic analysis in considering just what it is that people are up to when they write and read fieldnotes and ethnographic description. These experimental analyses borrowed from the CA tradition of data sessions and interrogated the ‘naïve readings’ of fieldnote data as an ethnomethodological perspicuous setting. Although this could not be called ‘CA work’ in any sense, we drew here on what we might call the earlier “ethnographic Sacks” who, of course, insisted that “if you can see something, and write it down, then you can build an observational study”.

These early meetings were formalized at the outset of the pandemic as weekly online meetings where we would discuss key readings and analyse a range of materials from fieldnotes and texts through to the more familiar video and audio records. In these sessions, membership categorisation analysis became an abiding concern. In drawing from and developing the work of Stephen Hester and collaborators (e.g. David Francis and Peter Eglin), Rod Watson, and more recently, that of Richard Fitzgerald and William Housley, we have aimed to further explicate the multi-layered, dynamically complex, and ‘kaleidoscopic’ character of endogenous categorisation practices in a range of professional, institutional, and mundane settings.

Meetings

The group meets weekly on Fridays. Meetings, while mostly data sessions can also at times be focused on readings, presentations, or tutorials. While the work on ethnographic data, video analysis, and membership categorisation analysis remains the focus of the group, CEEIT’s sessions are also importantly what members and contributors make them be.

Contact Us

  • Robin Smith – SmithRJ3[at]cardiff.ac.uk
  • Patrik Dahl – DahlPH[at]cardiff.ac.uk
  • Patricia Jimenez – JimenezP1[at]cardiff.ac.uk